Boo-boo stories commence once again. I started the story of my early affinity to self injury here and continued it here and got up to my teenage years. I would like to say that I got magically less awkward or unlucky as I grew into my teenage years in high school, but honestly that would be a lie.
So I was a jock in my younger life. Oh wait, I still am. Was. Whatever, maybe I will be again some day if I can stop tearing my freaking ACL. I played basketball and ran track in school which are not sports that immediately bring blood and violence to mind. But let me assure you, that running the hurdles can be downright dangerous. I still have some cinders in my knee from crashing over a hurdle on a crappy cinder track. Plus it is pretty easy to knock yourself out on hurdles also. Hit hurdle in glorious fashion while sprinting at full speed and very tired. Wipe out. Trip and fall but stay on feet trying to not loose balance, stumbling towards the next set of hurdle. Loose the battle and fall directly into the next hurdle. I am not saying it happened, just that it CAN happen and MAY have.
So my freshman year of basketball was a nightmare. We had a brand new psycho coach who didn't understand that my team sucked at basketball. Coach Psycho made us do sprints for every free throw missed and turnover in games we lost. Unfortunately we went 4-17 that season so lets just say that we were really quite fit (but still couldn't make a foul shot).
One day I was running a sprinting drill and got tripped up with another player at full speed and bam, down I went, right on my face. I got back up and sure enough, was bleeding nicely from the corner of my chin. I had split open a large enough gap to need stitches, but I stuck around practice long enough for team picture day. I remember making sure I was on my good side so that the picture wouldn't see the blood dripping from my chin. I ended up with five more stitches on my face. If anyone is counting, that is 69 + 5 + 5 = 79 stitches on my head alone. Excellent.
If basketball was good for practicing losing gracefully, luckily track was the opposite. My school was a track powerhouse known for their dominant hurdlers created by crazy coach Kenny. Kenny was crazy and weird, not pyscho really, most definitely falling on the loony side. He had tons of weird techniques, like setting up hurdles down a paved hill which forces you to run faster and therefore learn how to hurdle faster. That was always fun when you hit the hurdle. But really, his results were so astounding, and nearly every year, he took little skinny farm girls and made them dominant hurdlers at the state-wide level.
Well I started hurdling young, tagging along with my older sisters for special hurdle practice all summer long before I was even old enough to run track. My the time I finally got to my junior year of high school, my sister and I were the dominant family name among my county's hurdlers. Kenny always trained for the gold, a state gold medal, and so I felt an enormous amount of pressure to make it happen. Caring is the first mistake ladies and gentlemen.
So I qualified my junior year for the state competition in two hurdle events, the 100 and 300 meter hurdles runs. The state meet was held in the Ohio State University football stadium, the Horseshoe. Since my family are die hard Buckeyes fans/grads, this was the biggest hono
r in itself. I ran on Friday in the semis and qualified for both races for the finals. Family was excited, crazy Kenny was happy, and we decided to go to Damons to celebrate and carbo load for the next day. We walk in and are waiting in the lobby for a table when all of the sudden I feel something in my eye. It hurts really bad. I go to the bathroom but can't see anything. I could feel something stuck to the back of my eyelid, but I couldn't get it out. And it was killing me.
Suddenly, my coach is freaking out that I am going to scratch my cornea and not be able to see or run the next day. I ended up having to sit in the Ohio State Hospital ER waiting room for two hours (holding my eyelid away from my eyeball), before a doc could flip my eyelid inside out and remove the large piece of metal that was stuck in it. It was so incredibly random and I still have no idea how this happened from the Damons' lobby. The good news is that I somehow avoided scratching my eye and was able to recover and run the next day, earning my first state podium by finishing second in the 300 meter hurdles. Want to hear the crazy part? Almost one year later, I was go-carting with friends and the exact same thing happened again, although this time, I scratched my cornea and had to wear an eye patch and miss a track meet two days later. Seriously, this is just really bad luck people.
One year later in my senior year of track, I managed to tear (oops) my quad muscle in the middle of track season, effectively rendering me unable to run for about 5 weeks. It was devastating to me, after seven years of training year round to get to this moment. I started ultrasound therapy but was unable to run until the county championship meet when it was do or die. I prayed for a miracle and definitely had it answered as I was able to run every qualifying race I needed to (8) without pain all the way to the state finals where I once again took the silver medal. Never before have I ran with less training and more heart than that year. I am pretty sure I puked after every 300 meter hurdle run. Course, 300 meters of dead sprint with 8 barriers in between is a sadistic torture no matter how fit you are.
I am sure you are tired of the stories now. And I am pretty much done so just take a deep breath and hang on for one more if you can. I do have one last exciting surgery to tell you about. I somehow magically developed a tear in my stomach lining between the years of 0 and puberty (not really sure when but I had it for as long as I remember) and had to have a hernia operation when I was 19 years old. That's a fun surgery cause you get to walk around like an old man for a week or so. And that is sarcasm.
Right after the hernia operation, I got serious about the health of my body and so therefore joined rugby. The rest is history kids.
So I was a jock in my younger life. Oh wait, I still am. Was. Whatever, maybe I will be again some day if I can stop tearing my freaking ACL. I played basketball and ran track in school which are not sports that immediately bring blood and violence to mind. But let me assure you, that running the hurdles can be downright dangerous. I still have some cinders in my knee from crashing over a hurdle on a crappy cinder track. Plus it is pretty easy to knock yourself out on hurdles also. Hit hurdle in glorious fashion while sprinting at full speed and very tired. Wipe out. Trip and fall but stay on feet trying to not loose balance, stumbling towards the next set of hurdle. Loose the battle and fall directly into the next hurdle. I am not saying it happened, just that it CAN happen and MAY have.
So my freshman year of basketball was a nightmare. We had a brand new psycho coach who didn't understand that my team sucked at basketball. Coach Psycho made us do sprints for every free throw missed and turnover in games we lost. Unfortunately we went 4-17 that season so lets just say that we were really quite fit (but still couldn't make a foul shot).
One day I was running a sprinting drill and got tripped up with another player at full speed and bam, down I went, right on my face. I got back up and sure enough, was bleeding nicely from the corner of my chin. I had split open a large enough gap to need stitches, but I stuck around practice long enough for team picture day. I remember making sure I was on my good side so that the picture wouldn't see the blood dripping from my chin. I ended up with five more stitches on my face. If anyone is counting, that is 69 + 5 + 5 = 79 stitches on my head alone. Excellent.
If basketball was good for practicing losing gracefully, luckily track was the opposite. My school was a track powerhouse known for their dominant hurdlers created by crazy coach Kenny. Kenny was crazy and weird, not pyscho really, most definitely falling on the loony side. He had tons of weird techniques, like setting up hurdles down a paved hill which forces you to run faster and therefore learn how to hurdle faster. That was always fun when you hit the hurdle. But really, his results were so astounding, and nearly every year, he took little skinny farm girls and made them dominant hurdlers at the state-wide level.
Well I started hurdling young, tagging along with my older sisters for special hurdle practice all summer long before I was even old enough to run track. My the time I finally got to my junior year of high school, my sister and I were the dominant family name among my county's hurdlers. Kenny always trained for the gold, a state gold medal, and so I felt an enormous amount of pressure to make it happen. Caring is the first mistake ladies and gentlemen.
So I qualified my junior year for the state competition in two hurdle events, the 100 and 300 meter hurdles runs. The state meet was held in the Ohio State University football stadium, the Horseshoe. Since my family are die hard Buckeyes fans/grads, this was the biggest hono
r in itself. I ran on Friday in the semis and qualified for both races for the finals. Family was excited, crazy Kenny was happy, and we decided to go to Damons to celebrate and carbo load for the next day. We walk in and are waiting in the lobby for a table when all of the sudden I feel something in my eye. It hurts really bad. I go to the bathroom but can't see anything. I could feel something stuck to the back of my eyelid, but I couldn't get it out. And it was killing me.Suddenly, my coach is freaking out that I am going to scratch my cornea and not be able to see or run the next day. I ended up having to sit in the Ohio State Hospital ER waiting room for two hours (holding my eyelid away from my eyeball), before a doc could flip my eyelid inside out and remove the large piece of metal that was stuck in it. It was so incredibly random and I still have no idea how this happened from the Damons' lobby. The good news is that I somehow avoided scratching my eye and was able to recover and run the next day, earning my first state podium by finishing second in the 300 meter hurdles. Want to hear the crazy part? Almost one year later, I was go-carting with friends and the exact same thing happened again, although this time, I scratched my cornea and had to wear an eye patch and miss a track meet two days later. Seriously, this is just really bad luck people.
One year later in my senior year of track, I managed to tear (oops) my quad muscle in the middle of track season, effectively rendering me unable to run for about 5 weeks. It was devastating to me, after seven years of training year round to get to this moment. I started ultrasound therapy but was unable to run until the county championship meet when it was do or die. I prayed for a miracle and definitely had it answered as I was able to run every qualifying race I needed to (8) without pain all the way to the state finals where I once again took the silver medal. Never before have I ran with less training and more heart than that year. I am pretty sure I puked after every 300 meter hurdle run. Course, 300 meters of dead sprint with 8 barriers in between is a sadistic torture no matter how fit you are.
I am sure you are tired of the stories now. And I am pretty much done so just take a deep breath and hang on for one more if you can. I do have one last exciting surgery to tell you about. I somehow magically developed a tear in my stomach lining between the years of 0 and puberty (not really sure when but I had it for as long as I remember) and had to have a hernia operation when I was 19 years old. That's a fun surgery cause you get to walk around like an old man for a week or so. And that is sarcasm.
Right after the hernia operation, I got serious about the health of my body and so therefore joined rugby. The rest is history kids.
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1 comment:
You are funny! :)
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